


ours are the moments i play in the dark

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (barely), Christmas, Ex Sex, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day, ex-ex sex, rejected proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 23:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17233592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: Her stomach tightens with a thread of anticipation as she unlocks the front door. She remembers this feeling so well from high school: letting him into her empty house, the sense that there was something illicit about it, something…mischievous.Something promising.(Six years after they break up -- six days after she rejects a marriage proposal -- Betty and Jughead begin to rebuild.)





	1. christmas morning

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first chapter as a prompt fill. People seemed to like it! And asked for a continuation! So, I wrote chapter 2, and threw in some smut, cuz I know what ya'll are about.

“What are you doing here?”

Something clenches painfully in Betty’s chest. It’s not that she hadn’t anticipated the question; she had, when she’d realized after about fifteen minutes of walking just where it was that her feet were taking her.

It’s that after fifteen minutes more _,_ she still hasn’t been able to come up with a good answer.

“Can I come in? It’s freezing,” she deflects, her chattering teeth underlying the urgency. She’d tossed on her winter coat on the way out the door, thankfully, but hadn’t bothered to grab gloves or a hat. She’d just needed to _leave_.

Without another word, Jughead steps aside.

“Merry Christmas, by the way,” Betty adds as she unbuttons her coat, letting the relative warmth of the trailer’s interior wash over her.

“Yeah, Merry Christmas. Sorry.” Jughead shuts the door and turns to face her, and it’s only then that she notices he’s got his own winter jacket on. He follows her gaze down to the boots on his feet. “I was just about to head over to Archie’s,” he says with a shrug.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she dimly recalls Archie mentioning this – probably when she’d run into them at Pop’s on her first night back in town. The whole encounter is a blur now: Archie’s guileless smile; Adam’s hand at the small of her back; Jughead, avoiding her eyes, plowing through an entire basket of onion rings in what probably amounted to a five-minute conversation.

Normally she’d apologize, button her coat back up, and be on her way. But nothing about this is normal. She collapses onto the lumpy couch, its ancient springs squealing in protest, and tucks her hair behind her ears.

She wonders how long she can pass her trembling hands off as a side effect of the lingering cold, and not her own nerves.

Jughead crosses his arms over his chest as he leans against the doorway to the kitchen. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says slowly, “but I still have no idea why you’re here.”

Betty fiddles in her coat pocket for a moment, pulling out a little black velvet box. She places it on the coffee table.

Jughead’s eyes widen. “Is that –”

“An engagement ring.” She cups her hands beneath her mouth and blows on them gently – her fingers are still painfully chilly from the walk – and then folds them beneath her chin, staring at the box.

Betty doesn’t miss the path his eyes trace from the coffee table to her left hand, nor the subtle shift in his face as he sees her ring finger is bare. “I found it in Adam’s bag this morning,” she explains.

She really hadn’t been snooping. She’d just been trying to find the earrings that she’d bought for Polly’s Christmas gift, and thought she might have tossed them into the wrong suitcase while packing earlier in the week. When her hand had bumped against something that felt jewelry-box-shaped, she’d opened it, only to come face to face with a sparkling diamond ring.

Adam was in the shower. Her fingers had curled around the little box as a heavy knot formed in the pit of her stomach. And then she’d just…left.

And ended up here. On her ex-boyfriend’s couch. On Christmas morning.

Her mother must be throwing a fit right now.

Jughead looks even more confused as he runs a hand through his hair, unencumbered by his old beanie. He’d stopped wearing it at some point – she doesn’t know exactly when, as they were no longer in regular contact by then – but it arouses a strange, silly sort of possessiveness in her, knowing that something that was once a sign of her own intimacy with him is now shared with every random stranger he passes on the street.

“So you wanted to…what, warn me before your mom blows up Instagram with candid shots of the proposal?” Jughead is no longer leaning against the doorframe, but fully upright, a scowl darkening his features.

The fact that his mind would even go there has her second-guessing everything – though there had never been a first thought, other than the overwhelming urge to get out of her parents’ house. An urge that had, for some reason, brought her here.

(She knows the reason. Always has, if she’s being honest with herself.)

“Of course not.” Betty turns her gaze up towards his. “I’m not accepting it.”

Jughead’s still frowning, though there’s a certain familiar softness to it now. “Okay…you know you’re supposed to tell him that, right? Not me?”

Something in her cracks then, just enough to let loose the tears she hadn’t even realized she was holding back. He’s at her side in an instant, his hand hesitant at her back.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she confesses, wiping her nose gracelessly with the sleeve of her sweater. “Here, or anywhere. I just found it, and I started walking, and I ended up here.” Betty pauses. “All I know is I can’t stop thinking about you, Jug, since Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving, or more precisely, the night before Thanksgiving: when an off-handed offer to walk her home in the dark from their ten-year reunion at the Lucky Penny Pub had turned into two hours wandering the empty streets of Riverdale together. It was the most they’d talked in the six years since the breakup. They hadn’t kissed – hadn’t even touched – but by the end of it, a longing had taken hold of Betty that was so powerful her skin ached as they stood on her parents’ front stoop, and said goodnight.

Laying in bed that night, unable to sleep, she’d told herself it was mere nostalgia. Inevitable, really, to feel it with her first love, in the place where they’d grown up together. But it had followed her, like a shadow: to the dinner table the next day; to the train station; to the apartment in New York that she shared with another man.

At first, Jughead doesn’t react, other than the heavy press of his hand between her shoulder blades. Betty sniffles, her face growing hot with embarrassment.

“You don’t have to –”

“Me too,” he says, his words overlapping with hers. She can feel his thumb rubbing slowly, gently at the nape of her neck, and it sends a shiver down her spine. “I’ve been thinking about you. And us, and…everything I regret, really.”

He moves his arm away abruptly, running his hands over his face. He still hasn’t taken his jacket off, she realizes.

“Betty Cooper,” he says, ending her name on a sigh. He looks at her sideways. “You know there’s a conversation you have to have before we…before we have this one.”

The thought of it makes her feel sick. But there’s no other way forward at this point. “I know.”

Jughead slides his phone out of his pocket, looks at the time, and clears his throat. “I’m gonna be late, do…d’you want a ride over there? Or would that be weird?”

What she really wants is to stay. To tell him all the things that have been running through her mind for the last four weeks – the things she didn’t say six years ago, or six months ago. To take her clothes off, and watch him take his clothes off, and feel his skin against hers again. See if it’s really as good as she remembers.

“This is going to be so much worse than weird,” she says, a choked sort of laugh rising from her throat.

Jughead stands up and holds out a hand. She takes it; it’s warm, steady. Better than she remembers.

He lifts the side of his mouth in a half-smile, the first one he’s given her all morning. “Let’s go.”


	2. new year's eve

Betty knocks on the door, pauses, and pushes it open.

It’s just past ten o’clock, so the festivities are in full swing – though now that they’re all nearing thirty, Archie’s annual New Year’s Eve party has evolved into a more subdued affair than it was in years past. There are about twenty or so guests, most of whom Betty recognizes by face, if not by name, as she hangs her coat on a hook by the door.

Archie spots her immediately from across the room, his face splitting into a grin. “Betty! I thought you had to head back to the city.”

“Change of plans.” She slumps against him slightly as he envelops her in a warm, solid hug. After three days holed up in the house alone, it feels good to be touched, even if it’s entirely platonic.

His forehead creases slightly as he pulls back, gazing over her head towards the front door. “Where’s Adam?”

_Okay_ , she thinks. _Jughead didn’t tell him._

Not that there was much to tell, from his perspective – for all he knew, Betty had returned to her parents’ house on Christmas morning, snuck the little velvet box back into the bag where she’d found it, and cried tears of joy while her boyfriend slipped a sparkling diamond ring onto her finger in the midmorning glow of the lights twinkling on the tree.

What had actually happened had been both far more and far less dramatic than a surprise proposal. But if she even hints at it now, Archie will want the full story of how a four-year relationship went from apparently-thriving to dead-in-the-water in less than a week.

She’s not sure she _could_ explain it, even if she wanted to.

“He still had to go back. For work,” she says, hoping he’s drunk enough that he won’t notice the way her eyes dance away at the lie. “I’m gonna get a drink.”

Archie lets her go without question. But before she’s even managed to finish her first cup of fizzy punch, three other people have asked her where her boyfriend is tonight, and she realizes that she can’t make it through another false-cheery conversation about how much it sucks to go into the office between Christmas and New Year’s without breaking down, or throwing her drink on an innocent bystander.

As she’s pulling on her coat in the hallway, she hears the soft creak of the floorboards, and – somehow – knows without looking that it’s him.

“You’re leaving? Archie hasn’t even taken his shirt off yet.”

When she turns, Jughead is leaning against the bannister, a half-empty bottle of beer in one hand. His other hand – hanging by his side, one finger tapping an uneven rhythm against his thigh – is the only indication that he’s anything other than completely relaxed.

Her heart skips a beat as they lock eyes.

Betty forces her gaze down to the front of her wool coat as she buttons it up from the bottom. An excuse hovers on the tip of her tongue – _I’m not feeling well, I’m tired_ – but when she finally speaks, she says, “I can’t be here.”

It’s a lot more honest – more raw – than she’d had any intent to be tonight. But if she’s going to be vulnerable with anyone in the waning hours of the year, it may as well be him.

The corner of Jughead’s mouth quirks in sympathy. He sets his bottle on one of the stairs, and takes a single step closer.

“Can I come with you?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her stomach tightens with a thread of anticipation as she unlocks the front door. She remembers this feeling so well from high school: letting him into her empty house, the sense that there was something illicit about it, something…mischievous.

Something promising.

If Jughead feels the same way, he doesn’t show it, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat as he drifts past her into the foyer. She tries to recall the last time he was here, but it flickers just outside the boundaries of her memory. It had to have been six, maybe seven years ago. Neither of them was spending much time in Riverdale by the end.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks, drawing his gaze away from the Christmas tree, which sits still brightly lit in the corner of the living room. Her mother had suggested that Betty take it down while she and her husband were on vacation in St. Lucia, as thanks for allowing her to stay there for an extra week, but Betty hadn’t been able to bring herself to dispose of the one thing in the house that made her feel warm inside when she looked at it.

“Maybe. What’ve you got?”

Betty pulls open the fridge. “Water, orange juice, cranberry juice, seltzer, Chardonnay, more Chardonnay, Yuengling.” She leans back slightly, peeking at him from behind the door. “My stepdad keeps some fancy whiskey in the basement, too.”

Truth be told, she’s hoping he’ll join her for the last option. But the half-drunk beer he’d been holding at Archie’s notwithstanding, she has no idea whether he’s currently drinking or not. Jughead’s feelings towards alcohol had always shifted in relation to his father’s, and at present that could manifest in one of many different ways, as F.P. was currently serving time for his second DUI in as many years.

“Good to know. But let’s start smaller. I’ll have a beer.”

His response doesn’t reveal much, one way or the other. Which is fair, she supposes – just because she’d spilled her guts to him out of nowhere on Christmas morning doesn’t mean he has to do the same for her. Especially not when she’d followed it up with days of silence.

“Beer before liquor, never been sicker,” Betty singsongs quietly, but she pops the cap off a bottle for herself, too, before joining him on the sofa.

She turns on the tv and flips through the channels until she finds Anderson Cooper, then turns the sound down until it’s little more than a background hum. “He’s my favorite,” she explains, her face growing inexplicably hot, and then takes a long sip of her beer.

Jughead nods, shifting in his seat a little as he settles his bottle in his lap. “You did always love a silver fox.”

Betty looks at him. “I did?”

“No,” he admits with a short laugh. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Turning her attention back to the tv, she crosses one leg over the other, and then switches them, unable to get comfortable. She can practically feel the tension radiating off of him, despite the foot between them.

Maybe this was a mistake.

“So – hang on.” Jughead cuts himself off with a shake of the head. He leans forward to place his beer on the coffee table, and then presses mute on the tv remote before turning to face her.

“I thought…I thought that I was going to hear from you. And it’s okay that you didn’t, I mean, I didn’t reach out either, I didn’t want to push you, or presume, I just…” He runs his hands down his face, the way that he had on Christmas, sitting beside her on the couch in the trailer just as he is now. “Help me out here, Betty.”

She looks at him, her heart climbing into her throat. She’d known that there was a conversation like this waiting for her, so long as she was willing to have it. And while their mutual silence in the last few days had been somewhat disappointing, it had also been a relief. She’d needed that space to deal with Adam, her family, her _self_ , without another person breathing down her neck, wanting something from her.

“We broke up,” she admits, surprised by how good it feels to finally answer that unspoken question – _why isn’t Adam here?_ – with the truth. “He went back to the city the next morning to start moving his things out.”

The guilt of that still weighs on her – she was the one ending the relationship, so it seemed only fair that she be the one to undertake a last-minute scramble for a new apartment. But Adam had insisted, pointing out that most of the furniture was hers, anyway. He’d asserted two days ago via text that all his things would be gone by New Year’s Day, and that was the last she’d heard from him.

“Are you okay?” Jughead asks.

Betty purses her lips, looking down at her beer bottle. The label is half-destroyed, shredded by her fingernails as she’d picked at it unconsciously. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m sad, but not…”

_Not like I was when it was you_ , she thinks. She swallows. “I’m not, like, devastated.”

That realization – that she’d spent four years with someone whose absence from her future felt merely _sad_ , and not like the earth-shattering, life-changing heartbreak she’d expected – had been the hardest part of all. Knowing that she’d wasted her time – that she’d wasted _his_ time. That while she’d cracked his heart into tiny pieces, her own was so hardened over with scar tissue that it barely felt a thing.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, and she wants to take his hands in her own, tell him: _don’t be._

Instead she picks at the label again, with intention this time, carefully peeling what remains off of the glass. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she says. “I was overwhelmed, but. I should’ve told you.”

Jughead shrugs. “Maybe. It’s…your business.”

Beneath his words she hears the question he’s not asking, the question she’s pretty sure he’ll never ask her, at least not directly: _Was it because of me?_

It’s a question – _the_ question – that’s loomed large in her thoughts these past six days.

Part of her knows that while she’d sometimes daydreamed about a future with Adam, it had been only in a vague, nondescript sort of way. The way she’d daydreamed about Archie, back when they were kids – the half-formed imaginings of someone who didn’t really know what an adult relationship was like. What adult love was like.

But talking with Jughead again after the reunion had reminded her that it wasn’t always like that. She’d had fantasies of their life together, specific ones: slow, toe-curling sex on a mattress on the floor on their first night in their first apartment. Picking out a mewling black kitten from the animal shelter. Planning their wedding at the kitchen table, spreadsheets open on the laptop in front of her, her bare feet in his lap.

Walking beside him, dead leaves crunching beneath their feet, she’d been struck by memories of things that had never come to pass with him, that were nevertheless sharper, more _real_ than anything she’d ever imagined since.

Maybe the shock of that contrast was all that it was: the catalyst for the thing that was always looming ahead of she and Adam, no matter who else or what else crossed their paths.

But there’s another part of her that knows that it has to be more. Six years from now, she won’t feel for Adam what she feels for the man sitting beside her, bathed in the dim light of the Christmas tree. It _means_ something, that she feels this way. She knows that like she knows her own name.

But Betty doesn’t know if he knows it – if he feels it, too. If it’s hope underlying his hesitation, or just plain curiosity.

“It’s your business, too,” she says, quiet but bold, eyes focused on the bottle in her hands as she peels away the last edge of the oval-shaped label. “If you want it to be.”  

“ _If_ I want it to be,” he repeats, his voice landing on the edge of a question.

When she looks up at him again, her breath catches in her throat. Without realizing it – on her part, at least – they’ve drawn closer together, knees nearly touching.

“I mean, I don’t know.” Betty lets her eyes drop to his lips for only a moment. “You said you’d thought about us.”

Jughead shifts, his knee closing the minute distance still between them, pressing gently against hers. “Yeah. I have. I am, Betty, I –”

He pauses, his mouth pulling together in the way that she knows means he is gathering his courage. “I want us to try again. Not right away. I know you need time, but I think –”

_Fuck it,_ she thinks, and leans forward and kisses him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Betty kisses Jughead, and he kisses back.

His hands are on her before she can do anything else, cupping her face, her neck, and then they’re gone just as abruptly. He breaks the kiss, taking a ragged breath of air as he pulls back.

“Now?” he manages to say, forehead creased in disbelief.

He’s trying to do the wise thing, the _adult_ thing, and she loves him a little bit for it. But she’s been thinking about this – aching for this – for days. For his mouth on her skin, his heat inside of her. She takes his face in her hands, and shifts up onto her knees, swinging a leg over his lap to straddle him between her thighs. “Now, Jug.”

They kiss, a little longer this time, but when she lowers herself to press against him he pulls away again. “I don’t – this can’t be a rebound,” he tells her, his voice cracking on the last word. “I can’t go through that with you.”

Betty smooths her thumbs over his cheeks, and lifts one hand to thread through his hair, pushing the dark locks away from his face. She understands the doubts; she’d had them herself. There were reasons they’d broken up six years ago, good reasons. His father’s drinking, her parents’ divorce, his mother’s illness. They’d all slammed into Betty and Jughead like a speeding truck and spun away, leaving wreckage in their wake.

_You can’t handle this_ , he’d said at one point. It had felt like a punch in the chest. And instead of proving him wrong, she’d let him slip away.

She’d run through it in her head over and over in the last few days, alone in the empty, echoing house where she’d grown up. Thought about what she, they, could have done differently. What she’d do now.

Now she’d tell him: _I can._

_We can._

“You could never be a rebound.” She says it softly, the way she imagines a vow should be said.

He searches her eyes, and whatever he finds there must be enough, because then he’s kissing her again, deeply, demanding. Betty moans into his mouth as his fingers skim up the back of her dress, finding the zipper at the top.

His hands on her bare back feel as good as she’s imagined, and she arches into his touch, desperate for more. She slips her arms out of her sleeves and lets the fabric pool around her waist, gasping when he cups one of her breasts in his hand, his mouth sucking at the other.

“More,” she breathes, tangling her fingers in his hair. Jughead obliges, pulling her bra down, grazing her nipple with his teeth before soothing it with the flat of his tongue.

She slips his suspenders off of his shoulders and he tugs her underwear down past her knees, and soon they’re both naked, pressed together and panting into one another’s mouths. Betty’s not sure if she’s ever been so turned on in her life, not even when they were together before; there’s something about him right now that’s steadier, more confident, like he wants to prove something to her, and _knows_ he’ll succeed.

She’s so turned on, in fact, that she nearly fucks him right then and there. Jughead grasps her by the waist and shifts her slightly to the side, laughing when she whines in protest. “Wait wait wait. I have a condom. Just gimme a sec.”

She’d blush if her face weren’t already flushed with desire. “Right. Right, of course.”

Betty bites her lip and watches as he leans down to fetch his wallet from where his pants are discarded on the floor. Jughead at 28 is not a far cry from Jughead at 22, but there are little differences that send her blood racing in the best way: his shoulders are broader, for one thing, and his jaw a little more angular. She wonders if he’s been cataloguing the changes in her, too – the last vestiges of baby fat that have disappeared from her cheeks, or the rounded little scar beneath her left breast where she had a mole removed.

_Whatever he’s seeing, he likes it,_ she thinks, wrapping her hand around him and pumping lightly, biting back a smile when he groans.

Eventually Jughead rolls the condom on, and when she sinks onto him she nearly cries out in sheer relief at the feel of him inside her.

“ _Fuck_ , Jug,” she moans, wrapping her arms around his neck as she rocks against him, pushing him against the back of the sofa. He presses a kiss to her neck, then her collarbone, his hands skimming over her ribs. “You feel so good.”

At some point, he flips them, lowering Betty onto the cushions on her back. Jughead hitches her leg against his side, slowing the roll of his hips as he asks, “Can I put your leg up?”

The words strike her more deeply than they should. She _remembers_ this, the eager tone of his voice, the way his hands guide her calf over his shoulder. His shuddering sigh as he pushes into her deeper, the way her back bows in response. The memory pulses through her like a shockwave.

“Fuck me,” she begs, and when she comes all she can hear is her name on his lips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They lay together for only a minute or two before Betty starts to shiver, the thin sheen of sweat on her skin cooling just a touch past pleasant. She reaches up and tugs the throw blanket off the back of the couch.

“Sit up,” she instructs, and Jughead does, leaning forward as she climbs into his lap again and tucks the blanket around the both of them.

“I guess we’re gonna have to wash this blanket.”

Betty snorts. “Or just burn the whole couch.”

He smiles up at her, and Betty remembers this, too: her heart melting at nothing but the sight of him.

“You’re so pretty,” he says after a moment, and in it she hears _I love you._

_I love you, too,_ she thinks, even as she knows it’s far too soon to say it.

His fingers dance across her lower back, sending tingles up her spine. “So,” he says, his voice low. “I wasn’t planning to head back to Philly until Thursday.”

Betty sighs, slumping slightly against him. “I have to take the train home tomorrow night. I have to be at work on Wednesday.”

“Okay.” Jughead nods slowly, sliding his arms around her middle. She closes her eyes and rests her head on his shoulder. It feels so warm, so safe and steady, being held like this.

“Philly’s not that far,” she murmurs drowsily against his neck. She can just barely feel his pulse fluttering against her lips. “We’ll figure it out.”

She knows it. And as she feels his nose brush against the crown of her head, she knows that he knows it, too.


	3. valentine's day

Betty hands the slightly-crushed bouquet of roses to Jughead before leaning against the door to her apartment, applying just enough force that the lock slides open when she turns her key.

“Ta da.” She leads him inside with a sweep of her arm.

“Wow.” Jughead lets his duffel bag drop to the floor. “This is…unbelievably tiny.”

Betty laughs, smacking her hand lightly against his ribs. “Welcome to Manhattan.”

“Seriously, I don’t…” He trails off, and Betty knows what he’s about to say – _I don’t know how you’d have two people living in here –_ because it’s the same thought that she’d had the first time she’d seen it, when Adam had asked her to move in with him.

Still, she’s grateful when he doesn’t.

“It’s great,” he says instead, and then sets the flowers onto the kitchen counter before wrapping his arms around her in one smooth motion. “I can finally give you a proper greeting now.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first few weeks had not been as easy as she’d hoped.

After four years in a relationship, and two of cohabitation, wrapping her head around the logistics of single life had been a challenge. Her bills went six days past due, until Adam sent her a text asking how much he owed for their December utilities. When the light in the bathroom went out, she showered in the dark for a week before realizing she could just call building management to replace the bulb, which she couldn’t reach on her own. The gallon of milk she bought at the grocery store every Sunday spoiled before she got even halfway through it, because it turned out a gallon was much more milk than one person needed for a single bowl of cereal every morning.

Beatrice, the octogenarian who lived down the hall in 3B, had asked Betty three times why she hadn’t seen her “nice young man” around lately before it finally sank in that he no longer resided in the building.

And then there was the fact that she wasn’t technically single at all.

She texted with Jughead every day, and they spoke on the phone most nights. Mid-January, she took a long weekend to visit him in Philadelphia: three days that they’d spent mostly in bed, ducking out to the coffee shop on the corner for breakfast each morning, ordering in for everything else.

On the evening she’d left, his roommate had not seemed sad to see her go.

Jughead, on the other hand, had hardly been able to. He held her hand through the entire twenty-minute drive to 30th Street Station, nearly clipping a parked car when he took a right turn too tightly. In the drop-off lane he kissed her so thoroughly, for so long, that a security guard had to walk over and bang on the windshield to get their attention amidst a chorus of impatient, honking cars.

“I just got you back,” he’d murmured, words that had replayed through her mind during the entire train ride home.

It had taken every bit of Alice-Cooper-taught willpower she had not to cry on the 90-minute journey back to New York, but it wasn’t until she’d pushed open the door to her dark, empty apartment and promptly burst into tears that she realized how deeply terrified she was of everything that was happening.

Being with him was easy. Easier than she’d expected. But maybe being apart would prove too hard.

She’d sent Jughead a brief text to let him know she was home safe, and then forbid herself from communicating with him until a full twenty-four hours had passed. When she finally did call, he’d answered on the third ring.

“Are we doing this too fast?” she’d asked him, laying flat on her back on the queen-sized bed she’d last shared with another man barely four weeks ago. More words had bubbled up – _I don’t mean it, I want this, I want **you**_ – but she’d bit them back, needing to hear his answer first.

Through the phone she heard him sigh, and in her mind she could picture him perfectly: collapsing into the beat-up desk chair he kept in his bedroom, running his fingers through his messy, dark hair.

“I don’t know.”

She knew that it was his honest answer, but it was also an unhelpful one. “I’m scared, Jug,” she admitted, curling onto her side, voice small.

“Of what?”

“That it’s not going to work.” She paused. “That we’re just…torturing ourselves for nothing.”

He hadn’t answered right away, and her chest felt tight as she waited, like a pair of hands were squeezing her heart.

When he did speak, his voice sounded softer, farther away. “Yesterday I felt so…desperate.” She imagined him rolling the chair over to his window, looking out at the city lights. “I’m not normally that guy. I don’t want to be that guy.”

And she didn’t want to be that girl: the girl who pined, who cried, who lived a half-life because her other half wasn’t living it with her.

So they agreed – not to take a break, but to take a step back. Less texting, fewer calls. A relationship that was in some ways more similar to the one they’d had in those early, tentative weeks after their first kiss back in high school. No labels, no expectations, but an unspoken truth underpinning it all: that they were each other’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, nearly a month later, here they are: together again for the first time since Philly, doing things that would have made 16-year-old Betty blush and cover her eyes.

Jughead breaks the kiss and surveys the room over her head, his hands warm as they run up and down her sides, fingers brushing against her bare skin where her blouse rucks up. “Should I eat you out in the kitchen, or on the sofa?”

Betty freezes, unsure if she’s heard him right. “What?”

“You’re right, sofa’s comfier.” He lifts her up, hands gripping the backs of her thighs, and stumbles forward into her living room, depositing her onto the sofa cushions before he drops to his knees.

Heart racing, she bites her lower lip and unbuttons her fly as he slips off her socks. Her hips lift almost involuntarily as he tugs off her jeans, then gently pushes her knees apart, settling himself between them.

Jughead pulls her closer to the edge of the sofa, plucking at the lacy red band of her underwear. “These are cute.”

“Thank you.”

“They’ve gotta come off, though.”

Betty laughs. “That’s fine.”

“I just want you to know I appreciate the effort.” He tilts his head to kiss the inside of her thigh, sending a delicate shiver running up her spine.

Her brain is too foggy to form an appropriately witty reply, so she says nothing, lifting her hips again to let him pull the silky fabric down to her ankles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About an hour later – sleepy, sated, lying naked together beneath the woven throw blanket Betty keeps on the back of her couch – a thought strikes her. “Oh.” She pushes herself up on her elbows. “I forgot to put your flowers in water.”

Jughead locks his arm around her waist. “Mmm, no,” he whines, pressing his face to her neck. “Those came all the way from Philly. Another hour won’t kill ‘em."

_I love you._ The thought comes out of nowhere, just as it had when they’d slept together at her mother’s house on New Year’s Eve. (Also on a couch, though she’s not about to unpack that coincidence too thoroughly).

It’s not that she hasn’t thought it before. More than once she’s had to stop herself from saying it at the end of a call, or erase the words from her phone when they’re texting each other goodnight. Thankfully it was never something either of them was prone to say in the throes of passion. But that weekend they’d spent in Philadelphia together, sitting in the corner café, watching the way his long, elegant fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee, she’d felt like her chest might burst from holding it in.

It’s getting harder and harder not to say it, at the very moment when they’ve agreed to pull back on the reins – not barrel ahead into uncertainty.

“Juggie.” Betty pauses, just to be sure it’s his name she said, and not the three little words running in an endless loop through her mind. “You went to the trouble of bringing me these beautiful flowers. They deserve to be cared for.”

She untangles herself from his arms, ignoring Jughead’s muffled protest (which definitely does not include the words _you sound like your mom,_ because he definitely knows better than to make that comparison). She grabs her robe from where it hangs off the back of her bedroom door, and knots it around her waist as she makes the very short trip into the kitchen.

“It’s not even seven yet, we can’t take a nap,” Betty insists, flicking on one of the overhead lights. “We should put some clothes on…aren’t you hungry?”

He sits up on the couch, the blanket falling around his waist as he blinks. He looks adorably rumpled.

_I love you, Jughead,_ her heart sings.

_Shut up, Betty_ , her head snaps back.

“I could eat,” he says.

“We can get delivery.” Betty snips the ends off of the flowers with a pair of scissors, placing them into a glass vase one by one. “There’s good Indian, or sushi, or Thai…”

Jughead wraps the throw blanket around his waist and joins her in the tiny kitchen, standing so close behind her she can feel his body heat. “If we’re not going out,” he says, pressing a kiss to her shoulder, “then I see no reason to get dressed.”

Betty whirls around, brandishing one of the roses at him like a weapon. “The only reason we’re not going out is because it’s Valentine’s Day, and restaurants suck on Valentine’s Day.” She bops him on the nose with the flower. “This is not turning into Philly weekend, take two. We are going outside. Doing things.”

Jughead smiles. “I know.” He plucks the flower from her fingers and picks up the scissors, then cuts the stem much shorter than necessary to sit in the vase. Betty begins to protest, but her words fall silent when he tucks the flower into her messy hair, and presses a sweet kiss to her open mouth.

“I know.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead complains only half-heartedly when Betty drags him out of bed at eight-thirty the next morning, enticing him with the promise of a shared shower. (She doesn’t mention until it’s too late that the shower is way too small to get up to any funny business, other than washing your partner’s hair.)

After breakfast they head downtown; it’s an unseasonably sunny day, so they take a stroll on the High Line, until Jughead declares all the tourists are giving him heartburn. Instead they meander up towards Central Park, grabbing falafel from a hole-in-the-wall Greek place along the way, sticking as close to one another as they can so as not to slow down all the other people who are traversing the streets oblivious to Betty and Jughead’s hazy little bubble of love.

_Love, love, love._

By the time they return to her third-floor walkup, her feet are aching. “Sometimes I wish there was an elevator,” Betty sighs, trudging up the steps one by one.

Her words are met with a beat of silence, and then, without warning, he’s scooped her up in his arms, bridal-style. Betty’s yelp turns into a giggle as he pretends to struggle with the last few steps, faux-staggering under her weight.

Jughead deposits her at the top of the staircase with a fond pat on the rear. “I think you can take it from here.”

She smiles, digging through her purse for her keys. “What’s a girl gotta do to get that kind of service every day?”

Betty means it as a joke, but when she glances up at him, Jughead’s forehead is creased into the slightest of frowns, his eyes on the ground. She brushes her pinky against the back of his hand. “You okay?”

He looks back at her, his face brightening immediately. “Yeah. Fine.”

But the just-slightly-off feeling persists all afternoon, and into the evening, all the way through to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant just a few blocks from Betty’s apartment, where they run into one of her friends from an old job: a sweet woman named Nancy, whom Betty hasn’t seen since before her split with Adam.

“How are you doing?” Nancy rests a hand on Betty’s forearm. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard you and Adam broke up.”

She pays no more than cursory attention to Jughead, a fact that irritates Betty until she realizes it’s because Nancy assumes he’s just a friend. Because most people don’t _have_ a new boyfriend six weeks after ending a four-year relationship.

Not unless there was some…overlap.

Betty wishes she could tell her: _This is my boyfriend, but it’s not what you think. We were in love before Adam, before New York. Before you knew me. Before any of this was me._

But it’s not a conversation for a casual restaurant with a casual friend. And they’d agreed not to tell anyone they were together yet – other than Jughead’s roommate, and Archie, who had caught Jughead sneaking back into his house on New Year’s Day with a tell-tale smudge of lipstick on his collarbone.

(According to Jughead, Archie had been so happy to hear the news that he’d actually cried a little. But then, hangovers had always made Archie overemotional.)

Back in her apartment that night, curled up on the couch together while a cooking show plays on Netflix, Betty grabs Jughead’s hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell Nancy you were my boyfriend.”

His thumb rubs slowly back and forth over her palm; she wonders if he’s remembering the cuts that used to be there, the faint scars you can still see if you look for them in the right light. “It’s okay. We agreed not to tell anyone.”

“But…maybe we should?” Betty lifts her head from his shoulder, angling to see his face.

Jughead looks down at her, his thumb continuing its slow, soothing motion against her palm. “Do you want to?”

“I don’t know.” She pulls her feet up onto the sofa and pushes her toes between the cushion and his leg – a habit dating back to high school, anytime they were on the couch in his dad’s trailer, and her feet grew cold. “I think maybe I do.”

“But?”

Betty sighs, edging closer to rest her forehead against his shoulder. “But it makes me nervous. I mean…everyone’s going to think I cheated on him with you. Or I’m this heartless bitch who moved on too fast.”

She knows what the old Jughead would have said: _Who’s ‘everyone’? Who cares what they think?_ And maybe that Jughead would’ve had a point.

But this Jughead is a little older, a little more thoughtful.

“Then we can wait.” He moves his other hand from the back of the sofa to tip her face up to his for a kiss. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She savors the kiss, letting her eyes stay closed for a moment even after it’s ended. When she opens them, she can’t stop herself from asking, “Not even here?”

Jughead gives her a funny look. “What?”

“Here. Not this exact apartment, obviously,” she adds. “But…have you thought about it?”

“Yeah, I’ve thought about it.” He pauses as if waiting for her to speak again. When she does not, he asks, “What about you?”

Betty sits up, grabbing the remote off of the coffee table to pause the television, and buy herself a little time to think.

She’s considered it, of course. She tries not to – it feels like a betrayal of their agreement to take things slow – but whenever she allows her mind to wander down that path, it always trips over the same hesitations. _I have a job here. I have friends here._

If she’s honest with herself, the job is good, not great, and doesn’t have the potential for much more. The friends are slowly starting to trickle out of New York and into the suburbs, or less expensive cities elsewhere. But after so many years of learning to live here – to _thrive_ here – moving away feels almost like it would be giving up.

Just like she’d given up on Jughead six years ago. Something she’d only realized she regretted when it was almost too late to fix.

“I have. But – we don’t have to talk about this now. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s too soon.” Betty swallows. “Right?”

Jughead looks as though he wants to say more, but he merely lets out a long breath and shifts his gaze back towards the tv, scratching idly at the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re right.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she wakes the next morning, Jughead is already awake in bed beside her, propped up on one elbow as he scrolls through his phone.

“Good morning.” He bumps his foot against her leg beneath the sheets.

“How long have you been up?”

“Not long.”

Betty rolls onto her side towards him, letting her eyes trace along his profile. He’s leaving tomorrow, with no set plans to come back, nor she with any set plans to follow him south.

_We deserve a good day together_ , she tells herself as she edges closer across the mattress.

Jughead doesn’t seem to realize what she’s doing until she’s practically pressed up against him, one leg slipping between his. She palms him through his boxer briefs, unsurprised to find he’s already hard.

“Oh. Hi there.” His arm slips over her waist as she nuzzles against his neck, his hand skimming up her bare back beneath the t-shirt she’d slept in.

Slowly, they tug each other’s clothes off, hands still fumbling through the last vestiges of sleep. She rolls him onto his back and he groans as she sinks onto him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she presses close, resting her cheek against his.

_I love you so much_ , she imagines telling him with the roll of her hips. _I’ll never love anyone like this,_ in the way her fingers thread through his hair, the way she trembles when she comes.

_I’ll do anything,_ she thinks, _if you just keep touching me like this._

As much as she’d like to spend the entire day lounging in bed together, Betty had meant what she said about not allowing a repeat of their Philly weekend. Cold, dreary rain drizzles down from the late morning sky, so they decide to while away the day at the Met. Waiting in line for tickets, Jughead’s aghast to learn it’s only her second visit since moving to the city years ago.

“You’re lucky I’m here to force you into some culture,” he tells her, slapping a museum pamphlet into her hands.

Betty laughs, threading her arm through his as they meander down a hallway towards the Egyptian art. “Says the guy who plays Overwatch with Archie three times a week.”

They wander the first floor for hours, sometimes admiring a piece side by side, sometimes drifting apart as different works catch their interest. Betty gets caught up in the Medieval hall, but somehow knows without question that she’ll find him contemplating the modern and contemporary art a few galleries away. When she spots him standing in front of a Rothko, she slips her arms around him from behind, pressing her cheek to the center of his back.

For a moment, she closes her eyes and just breathes.

A little past noon, both of their stomachs start to growl. They eat lunch in the café, Jughead rolling his eyes at the $15 sandwiches, sneaking chips off of her plate like always. Betty pretends to be mad; he pretends to be contrite.

When they take the elevator back down a floor, it’s improbably empty, and he wraps his arms around her, exhaling against the crown of her head.

“This is so nice,” he murmurs.

She makes it through another thirty minutes of 19th century European paintings before she can’t take it anymore. She grabs his hand, pulls him down a hallway past a sign that says they shouldn’t be there.

“I want you to take me home,” she says, looking him straight in the eyes, “and I want you to fuck me.”

She doesn’t have to tell him twice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in her apartment, Jughead pulls off her top, pushes her skirt up and tugs her panties down. He bends her over the side of her bed, pressing sloppy kisses down the back of her neck while his hand slips into the cup of her bra, tweaking her nipple.

“Oh, fuck.” Her fingers twist into the sheets as her toes skim the floorboards.

“How do you want me?” His breath feels hot against the shell of her ear. “You want me to fuck you hard?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she moans, the word stuttering out of her mouth into something barely recognizable as English.

She whines when he takes a step back to shuck off his own clothes, and he laughs a little. “You’re so impatient.” Jughead nudges her legs apart and slips his hand between them, brushing lightly over her. He presses himself against the inside of her thigh, teasing. “God, and so fucking wet.”

“ _Please_ , Jug.” She’s not afraid to beg for it, but she doesn’t have to; his hand is quickly replaced by his cock, sending a jolt of pleasure through her limbs as he buries himself inside of her.

With two of his fingers rubbing circles against her just right, his hips snapping against her in a steady rhythm, it doesn’t take long until she’s shuddering around him. Betty slumps forward against the bed, her breath catching in her throat as he slides out and then guides her gently onto her back.

“You still good?” His voice comes softer now. She nods, biting her lower lip, heart racing with anticipation as she cants her hips towards him so he can slip off her skirt and push himself inside of her again.

As he does, something shifts in the air between them. His thrusts are slower now, deeper. He dips his head to her chest and takes one nipple into his mouth, sucking lightly at the sensitive skin until it’s almost too much. She moans, and weaves her fingers through his hair, tugging his face up to hers.

Betty frames his face in her hands, looking him in the eyes for a long moment before she pulls him in for a kiss. She thinks she hears her name somewhere among the ragged breathing, the soft creak of the mattress beneath them. There’s nothing and no one in the world but this: their bodies, this bed.

Jughead buries his face in her neck when he comes, mumbling words she can’t make out against her skin.

 

 

 

 

 

Though it’s cold outside, the apartment is hot, and after using the bathroom Betty cracks open a window before slipping back into bed. She lays against him like a puzzle piece fitting into place, her head on his chest, and tries to think about anything other than the fact that by this time tomorrow, he’ll be gone.

Jughead curls his arm around her, threading his fingers through her hair. “I missed this.”

Betty smiles. “Sex?”

Beneath her cheek, his chest rumbles with a laugh. “Yes,” he admits. “But also just this.”

He trails his index finger up her arm, the light touch giving rise to goosebumps. “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.”

Betty squeezes her eyes shut; it’s the last conversation she wants to have right now, when she’s feeling so relaxed, so safe, so _good_. “Jug…”

“No, listen.” He sits upright, tucking a pillow behind his back, keeping one arm around her shoulders. “We have to talk about these things. Even the hard things. We can’t let it be like last time.”

There’s so much he could be referring to, _last time_ , but she knows that he mostly means the end. The thin smiles papering over hurt. The phone calls that went unanswered and unreturned. They’d both been guilty of it: skimming along the edges of what they were really feeling, until they had no choice but to sink down through the cracks, only to find there was no bottom anymore to find their footing.

Jughead moves his hand from her arm to the back of her head, slipping his fingers through her hair, tugging lightly at the tangles he finds there. “Do you remember when we graduated?”

Betty smiles, turning her head to press her cheek against his chest. It feels like a u-turn from where the conversation had been heading, but it’s a detour she welcomes. “Yes.”

It had remained one of her favorite memories, even in the years after they’d broken up: sneaking away from the afterparty at Pop’s together, his tie loose around his neck, her hair falling out of the tight French braid that her mother had plaited that morning. They drove to the Sweetwater and sat side by side on the riverbank, bare feet skimming across the water while moonlight filtered through the trees.

Even now she remembers how her veins had thrummed with anticipation: of sex, mostly, and something else she couldn’t quite name. How instead of slipping the straps of her dress down over her shoulders as she expected, he had taken her hand, and told her that he wanted to marry her.

It hadn’t been a proposal. Just a statement of fact. A fact she knew deep in her heart was true for her, too. (She’d told him that, when she was done kissing the breath out of his lungs.)

Beneath her cheek she can feel his heart pounding. _Don’t be scared_ , she wants to tell him. But she knows her own terrified heartbeat would give her away.

“I said that night that every possible version of my future had you in it.” His voice is low, soft. “I was trying to be romantic. But I really believed it, too. For a long time, even after we broke up.”

Jughead sighs. “And then years went by, and you started dating someone. And I still remember how I felt when Archie told me it was serious. Me and you weren’t even _talking_ by then and I just…I finally realized what a stupid cop-out it was.”

Betty pulls back then, sitting up so she can look at his face.

He smiles at her, a wistful, sweet smile that makes something in her chest tighten. “I really did mean it. I meant everything I said that night. But I didn’t understand then that if I want to be with you, I have to make it happen. I can’t sit back and think everything’s going to work itself out on its own.”

Jughead tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, letting his hand brush her cheek before it falls back to the bed. “What I’m trying to say, in my long-winded way, is that I’ll move to New York if that’s what I have to do to be with you. I’ll move to the moon.” He pauses, his mouth curling into a lopsided grin. “I’ll even move to Riverdale, if that’s what you want, though I think we’d need to have a _really_ long talk about it.”

Of all the myriad thoughts suddenly racing through her brain, only three words feel like an adequate response to what he’s just told her. Betty doesn’t know what to say.

So she kisses him.

Jughead seems okay with this answer; his fingers skim over her hips, hitching her against him as she straddles his lap. He wraps his arms around her middle as they settle into one another, cradling her upper body, her breasts pressed against his chest. His lips are soft and slightly chapped.

She wants to feel them against her own, always.

Betty pulls back, holding his face in her hands. “I love you,” she tells him, a knot of tension unraveling from the space between her shoulders.

“Betty. I love you, too.” He sounds relieved. She wonders if he’s been doing the same thing that she has: holding the words back, swallowing them down, erasing the letters one by one.

Betty traces her thumb over his cheekbone, searching his eyes. “I could move.” She means it. “I _would_ move for you. I never meant to make it sound like I wouldn’t, it’s just…”

“Scary?”

His hand strokes idly up and down her back, and she leans back into his palm, enjoying the pressure of his fingers against her spine. “Yeah.”

“I get it.” Jughead rests his other hand on her shoulder, thumb rubbing over her collarbone. “But I just can’t imagine this not being worth it.”

In that moment – a cool breeze from the window dancing over her flushed skin, his hands on her body, her heart in her throat –

Neither can she.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Betty takes him back to Penn Station the next morning. When she give him a long, lingering kiss goodbye, no one interrupts to tell them they’re taking too long.

This time, on the train ride home, she allows herself to cry a little. She misses Jughead already. And while they’d both agreed to give it a few more months before exploring a move in earnest – one way or the other – they hadn’t yet made any concrete plans to see one another in the interim.

But this time, when she pushes open the door to her dark, empty apartment, she’s not afraid.  

She’s hopeful.

She’s in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this third chapter around Valentine's Day, thinking I'd also _post it_ around Valentine's Day...and then things got a little out of control. I've been tinkering with it for ages. This is actually the third version of it; the first one had them much more openly arguing about their respective geographical futures, and the second softened that a bit, but it ultimately didn't feel right until I worked through this iteration. It was tough to strike a balance between leaving things a little bit open, but also not leaving things feeling too sad. 
> 
> Anyway: I really hope you enjoyed this third and final chapter of this prompt fill that was only ever supposed to be one! :) Comments are so so so deeply appreciated. <3

**Author's Note:**

> My little holiday gift to everyone out there in the Riverdale / Bughead fandom. This show is a wild ride but it's so much fun to experience it with all of you.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, I'd love to hear from you! <3


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